


A Warden's Cause

by disasterhawke



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angry Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Disaster Hawke, Dragon Age Adoration, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Grey Warden Alistair (Dragon Age), Inquisitor (Dragon Age) is not the Protagonist, Male Dwarf Inquisitor, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, Plot Twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25291780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disasterhawke/pseuds/disasterhawke
Summary: The barmaid working in the Herald's Rest has a secret that could change the world. In the end, all she wants to do with it is save lives.One day she saves one that changes everything her strange new reality has to offer.[A one-shot exploration of a Modern Character in Thedas who keeps her influence subtle until there's one thing she can't resist changing for the better: the moment someone dies in the Fade at Adamant.]
Relationships: Alistair (Dragon Age)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 305
Collections: Favorite Self-Insert and OC-Centric Fanfics, Suggested Good Reads





	A Warden's Cause

**Author's Note:**

> I've never tried a Modern Character in Thedas story before, and wanted to experiment - I've no idea how well it came out, but I hope you enjoy!

“I’m telling you, Cab, no matter how much I scrub it’s not coming out. Whatever Crem did to the bar, it’s here for good.”

There’s a chance it could come out, actually, but it’ll take her wrist with it - and giving up limbs definitely isn’t part of her job description. Sighing, Lila picks the cloth up and kneels to rinse it in the bucket.

“You don’t wanna know what Crem did t’it,” Cabot grimaces, patting her on the shoulder. “Thanks for trying. Hey, you good to shut up tonight? Seems quiet, and after last night…”

She smiles, resting one slightly damp hand on the dwarf’s. “Go get some rest. I’ll be fine on my own. But take that empty keg down before you go? Swear I’ll do my back in if I keep lifting those things.”

Cabot grins at her. “That’s your weak human body for you.”

But he takes the keg with him when he goes, which will help keep up the appearance that she is, indeed, a weak human woman. Lila sighs, and hangs up the now wrung out cloth on a hook. Lies built upon lies. She’d never been very good at lying in her life before Skyhold. But ending up in the fortress of the Inquisition changed that. Now, every moment is spent thinking  _ what if, what if, what if _ .

Not that she’s dared to do anything yet.

It’s different when you’re looking at them. When you’ve served them drinks and handed them buckets for their vomit and then taken that vomit outside. When you’ve seen that the people of the Inquisition are real, living, breathing people...it becomes a lot harder to start seeing their future as some kind of puzzle to be solved. And at the same time, all the more important to keep them safe.

So Lila keeps her head down, plays up her reputation as the sweet, harmless woman who helps Cabot work the bar in the Herald’s Rest - and never mentions that three months ago, she stepped out of a Fade rift from a world where theirs was a game to be played.

“You got any of that whiskey left, doll?”

The low, gravelly voice makes Lila spin round in surprise, but given who she ends up facing, that doesn't look strange at all. “For you, Inquisitor, I’ve got a whole bottle.” She grins. “Would you  _ like _ the whole bottle, or will a glass do this time?”

Wryly, the dwarf heaves himself up in front of the bar and shakes his head. “Glass for today. Josie’ll have my head if I turn up to another meeting that hungover.”

“With respect, Inquisitor,” Lila says, reaching for the bottle, “from what I heard, you weren’t hungover. You were still drunk.”

Edric waves his hand. “Nyeh, same difference. Your bar’s mighty quiet this evening.”

“Unlike you, ser, most of the people in Skyhold need a little longer to recover from the First Day festivities. Even the Chargers.”

Turning on his stool, Edric jabs a thumb over his shoulder. “Bull’s still here.”

“That’s because  _ the  _ Iron Bull is part of the furniture, ser,” Lila grins, waving at the qunari as he looks over. Of everyone in the Herald’s Rest, the Iron Bull is one of the people she’s most nervous of. Not because he could gore her with a single shoulder charge - there’s plenty of people here who could kill her before she could so much as bob, let alone weave - but because he can rumble her for an outsider with a single slip up.

So she’s done the only thing a sensible British woman can do. She’s weaponised niceness.

Inquisitor Cadash turns back to his glass - already empty - and Lila fills it with a glance at his face. His dark skin looks sallow today, shiny and matte in the wrong places. His beard is out of order, but looks frankly pristine next to the mop of hair rioting atop his head. He looks, as all Inquisitors ought to in the flesh, like absolute trash.

Lila leans forward as if carefully measuring the amount of whiskey in the glass. “Everything alright?” she asks, softly.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Edric replies warily, sitting back in his stool and snatching his glass away from her.

“Well, ser...you look like shit.”

There’s a tense pause - then Edric bursts out into raucous laughter, resting one hand on the bar for support. “Fuckin’ Fereldens. You’re damn refreshing, you know that? Sure, I look like shit, doll, you have any idea what’s happened to me in the past...fuck, how long’s it even been?”

“Probably not as long as it feels like it’s been,” Lila smiles, resting the bottle back down on the bar. There’s no point sealing it. You don’t seal bottles of whiskey around the Inquisitor. “You do pack things in.”

“No shit.” He knocks back half the glass. “You know what? It’s this place.”

“Skyhold?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ massive for one. And it’s  _ mine _ . You got any idea how weird that is?”

Lila shakes her head, eyes flickering around the bar. It’s pretty much just them and Bull now - and Sera, somewhere upstairs. Cole she doesn’t tend to see. What he knows about her - or doesn’t know - keeps her awake at night, so she’s glad not to see him. Just like she’s glad she got a job in the one place that Solas would never go.

“Not a one, ser, but I imagine it’s pretty strange.”

“Pretty strange. Yeah, that’s a way to put it. You know I had to sign forms to say someone could fix a staircase? And another to say people could paint a wall? Shit, Josie keeps asking me what kind of  _ décor _ I want.” He elongates the Orlesian word with both his voice and the stubby fingers of one waggling hand.

Lila leans forward on the bar, resting on its edge with her arms. “Most people would be glad of a bit of a paperwork break after the year you’ve had.”

“Fuck that,” Edric spits - then literally spits, a habit that Lila has long since given up trying to get her patrons out of. At least he does it on the floor. “Give me a pack of Templars hunting some mages any day. Or a dragon. Hey Bull, you wanna go find another dragon?”

“Always, Boss,” the Iron Bull yells in return, holding his tankard up. He doesn’t move towards them, but Lila’s pretty sure he was already watching.

“There’ll be something else, Inquisitor,” Lila says carefully, reaching for the bottle at his impatient gesture. “There’s always something else. You could go hunt down some rifts, if you’re really bored.”

His eyes gleam. “Now that’s an idea.”

“A lot of the people we get coming here? Civilians wanting to help, and people signing up to fight? They come because they’ve seen you out there. In the Hinterlands, and beyond. They’ve had their lives turned upside down by rifts. It might not seem like much to you, closing them - but to these people, it saves their lives. Saves the people they love.”

The words come out of her in a rush, before she’s really thought of what she’s doing - that old self in the back of her mind, the one perpetually thinking  _ but if they do this then this happens,  _ has crept out to try and turn Edric into a completionist. Great. There aren’t any achievement points when it’s actual  _ lives _ , Lila.

But Edric doesn’t look at her oddly. He frowns, then lets out a single huff of a chuckle, then tilts his head. “Really?”

Of course…saving those lives is better than any computer game achievement.

“Really, Inquisitor,” Lila says, smiling softly. In for a penny… “And I’m not an expert or anything, but it seems to me - well, the more people know that you can do that, that you are doing that, the more help we get. The stronger we are for...well, when something else happens.”

Adamant and Halamshiral are next. God, this Inquisitor is not ready for Halamshiral. They’ll eat him alive and he’ll spit on their feet for it. They’ve got to get him ready, got to - no. She’s pushed this too far already. She can’t keep doing this, because someone will catch her, and then she’ll have to answer all the questions she’s been stoically keeping out of her mind. Like whether all of this is real.

“You know, doll,” Edric says, patting her hand and gently coaxing the bottle out of it in the process. “I think you might be right.”

Lila doesn’t stop him walking out of the room with the bottle. Anyone else and Cabot would have her head - but for the Inquisitor, anything goes. Though she suspects that, as he said himself, Josie will have his head in the morning instead.

She cleans down and closes up not long after that. No one else is coming, and even Bull’s gone to bed now - a sure sign that it’s getting late. That or he's taken one of the soldiers to his room. In the quiet, through every sweep of her cloth and every brush of the broom, Lila feels the panic creep a little more into her stomach. Cole could have been listening. He could have been listening to all of it, knowing what she’s thinking, knowing -

The panic doesn’t calm on the walk to her rooms, or quiet in the days that follow. If anything, it gets worse - the Inquisitor follows her advice and goes out hunting the last of the rifts in the Hinterlands, before moving on to who knows where else.

But then, little by little, they start to flood in - the believers. The people who’ve come, just as she said they would, because the Inquisitor saved them.

“It was right by our farm,” one young woman tells Lila, clutching a baby to her chest as a toddler clings to her leg. “We were trapped in there for days. I thought we were done for. Praise Andraste that the Inquisitor came.”

Kneeling down, Lila hands the toddler a piece of bread and her mother a warmed cup of milk for the baby. When the toddler grins and grasps at her hands with sticky fingers, it all - suddenly, painfully - becomes a lot more real. She did this. She did this. She can save the lives of so many people.

And doing nothing - doing nothing kills them.

Damnit.

\---

Over several weeks, Lila begins the tentative task of nudging people a little more. She encourages Cassandra to trust the Inquisitor, Varric to give Cassandra a chance, and everyone to treat Cole better (whilst quietly, stoically avoiding him - or so she hopes). She encourages Sera’s craziest ideas and pours drink after drink for Cullen until he finally gets drunk enough to relax for a little while.

It’s like something has snapped in her, because none of these things make her fear for changing the future. She only knows the future to a point, after all, and she doesn’t know what it’s like when  _ she  _ is here, interfering. But if she just tries to do things the Inquisitor might do anyway, to reinforce them...that’s probably fine, right?

It goes well.

Until something she hadn’t calculated for comes into her bar. This thing, the event that makes her drop an almost full bottle is the tall, dark-haired, bearded man who walks in looking like a fucking game poster.

“I’m taking that out of your wages,” Cabot calls over one shoulder, as Lila tears her eyes away from Garrett Hawke and begins to clean up the mess she’s made.

The flash of hero worship, however, is over very quickly. In fact it vanishes the moment the mage opens his mouth, because she’s forgotten a second thing about Hawke being here - this Hawke is a man who watched the city he swore to protect burn to the ground, because one of his closest friends (lover?) made it explode. A fact that seemed much less of a big deal when it  _ was _ a game. A game she was playing  _ as _ that trash fire.

“Varric, this place is shittier than the Hanged Man! It doesn’t even have a  _ real bar _ .” He drops his voice for the second half, as if attempting to whisper, but failing completely. Lila suspects it’s on purpose.

Beside her, Cabot stiffens - and smashes a mug down on the table. “I’ll have you know I made this bench myself,” he snaps. “And you’d best apologise to it, lest it give you none of the bounty between its lovingly handmade legs.”

Lila chokes back a laugh as Hawke - and Varric, just behind him, with a pained expression - make it up to the bar. It is, to be fair, a little embarrassing that the bar isn’t a real bar. It’s led to more than a few thefts from the stock behind it, with people sneaking their hands underneath at busy times. Hey, at least they’ve gone for the booze between the table’s legs, not her -

The sound of her laughter, stifled though it is, draws Hawke’s attention. He locks eyes that are so blue you can actually notice their colour upon her, moving them mechanically over her body as if cataloguing each aspect. She can hear his voice, low and sarcastic, in her head: boring height. Boring hair. Boring eyes. Boring face. Boring body. Yep, definitely an NPC. Likely to be killed at some point by a blood mage.

“He’s quite serious,” Lila says, because it feels awkward  _ not  _ to say something now she’s had his eyes rake over her.

Hawke smirks. “That it’s bounteous, or that I should apologise?”

“Both.”

“Well then, you’d best show me its bounty whilst I apologise...thoroughly.”

Afterwards, Lila isn’t sure whether it’s the way his voice transforms into a husky growl or the fact that he then kneels and kisses the side of the bar that shocks her most. Either way, she does the only thing you can do in that situation. She gets the mage the best drink they have in the house.

“Hawke,” Varric sighs, shaking his head at him, “you don’t know what’s happened on that bar.”

As he accepts the tankard, Hawke rolls his eyes. “It’s not a bar! Besides, you once got so drunk you licked our table at the Hanged Man. I, sir, did not kiss this bar with tongue.”

The two of them take over the tavern like it  _ is _ the hallowed Kirkwall haunt after all, occupying one table, then two, then three as more and more people are drawn in to listen to Varric tell the Tale of the Champion in person, with the Champion right there. Lila steals glances at the dark-haired man as the crowd gathers and grows more raucous.

He watches the exit. Not just the main entrance, but the way out behind the bar too, and every window. He’s seated himself with his back to a pillar so that nothing can surprise him. He reaches, every few minutes, for his staff - as if to check it’s still there, at his side. Garrett Hawke does not want to be here; he doesn’t feel safe.

The next bottle she brings him isn’t the best - it’s the strongest.

\---

She can’t let the rest of them break like Hawke is broken. She’s too late to help him, but she can help the others. When Cassandra storms in with a curt but polite request for an ale, Lila lets her sit on her own and then accidentally reads one of Varric’s harder-to-get books behind the bar. Within half an hour, she and Cassandra have lamented the lack of another chapter of  _ Swords and Shields _ at length, and Lila thinks she might’ve convinced Cassandra to re-read the first. Hopefully where the Inquisitor can see her.

Edric comes in a few days later - "It's a two bottle day, doll." - and gets so drunk in the process of venting the litany of his companions’ problems that, not knowing how else to help without being obvious, Lila simply writes a list of them down for him and tucks it into his pocket. He’ll find it in the morning. Maybe if she's lucky he won’t even remember where it came from. Thank the Maker she spent all those hours learning the weird runes they use for writing here.

A few days later, Sera charges through screaming the house down in the name of cherry brandy, demanding that a party be held to celebrate the death of Lord Whatever His Name Was. Her party is legendary in Skyhold for all of two months - until Hawke manages to destroy most of the bar when they get back from Crestwood.

"Drinks for everyone! On me! I will literally let you drink it from my lithe, young body!"

"Hawke," sighs Varric, lingering at his side with a wry smirk, "neither of us has been young for at least a decade."

But even though she knows Hawke’s bravado is false, it is not the thing that breaks her. None of these things are the ones that break her. That make her realise that, no matter how much she does - no matter how many details she manages to recall and pass on to Edric - something will always go wrong.

No, the moment that makes Lila realise this is the moment that Alistair Theirin walks into her bar.

"Uh, hi."

“Hi. Can I get you anything?”

“You’d be a pretty shoddy barmaid if you couldn’t,” the Warden grins in an expression halfway between impish and sheepish. “Uh. Anything’ll do.”

Lila smiles. “I would at that. Nice to hear another accent from home.”

He’s handsome. Not in the way that Hawke is handsome, all dark power and intensity. Alistair is just...lovely. Somehow that’s even more arresting. His smile is always lopsided, and his gaze is a little too faraway, as if he’s always thinking about something. The false calling, maybe.

“I know what you mean,” Alistair says, his eyes skittering around the bar. “Can I ask, is there a reason your bar isn’t...you know…”

“A real bar?” She laughs. “You’re lucky Cab’s off tonight. He hates it when people say that. We make do. I’m sorry it’s missing one of the boards, too, but we’ve your friend Hawke to thank for that. Anyway, the Inquisition’s got much more important things to focus on. I hear the tower’s nearly finished, now the Inquisitor’s found all those quarries in the Approach.”

That one had taken some effort. She’d had to sneak a book on geography from the library and leave it open the last time Edric came into the bar. Still, it was worth it - prestige for the Inquisition, better housing for the Templars, which meant fewer arguments in the bar late at night. The recruits could be restless when they weren’t out on operation.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” In lieu of a seat, Alistair plants one large hand on the table and sighs, taking the drink from her. “He made us traipse around finding them on the way back.”

Something in Alistair’s voice changes. She’s learned to spot these things, these opportunities. Lila frowns and leans back against the shelves behind her.

“Hard trip?”

Alistair nods into his tankard. “Do you ever wonder,” he asks, “if you’ve understood something so fundamentally wrong that when you realise it...the world just doesn’t look quite the same?”

Lila thinks of toddlers with sticky fingers, Sera’s laughter, the sound of people screaming so loudly in the infirmary you can hear it from out the back of the Herald’s Rest.

“Yes,” she says, softly.

His eyes flicker up to meet hers. “I don’t know that I believe...that people are really good, deep down.”

There is a soft, fading weight to Alistair’s words. They reach her despite Maryden’s song, which today is about the Inquisitor and his companions, their exploits and triumphs. She’s wondered the same thing. The problem with realising that all the people here are people is that you realise that all the people  _ there _ are too. The red templars. The mages loyal to Corypheus. Calpernia and Samson. They’re real. They’re really that terrible.

Not knowing what else to do, Lila rocks forward, places her hand on the table. Her fingers twist to rest just on top of Alistair’s. His hand is warm, the skin rough.

“If they aren’t,” she says, looking down, “does that change anything?”

He laughs. It’s a warm sound, but there’s something empty about it. His thumb twists to rub her own, lightly, scratchily. Heat trails up her arms, up her legs, like liquid fire in her veins. 

“I guess not.” A pause. “How...long are you back there? Behind the bar, I mean.”

Lila’s head snaps up. She stares at him, taking in for the first time the breadth of his shoulders, the hair wet from rain and mussed by restless attention. The way his skin seems so warm a hue against the stark blue and silver of his armour. His fingers have tangled lightly with hers now, so big and so real and so -

“All night, I’m afraid.” Lila laughs, forcing the sound out of herself. “Long shifts for me when the boss has his day off.”

Her words come out so abruptly that Alistair flinches his hand back, taking it for rejection. It is, because it has to be. He nods, murmurs a goodbye, and turns to find a table to himself. Lila does not watch him then, nor as he drinks his ale, nor when he gets up to leave, alone and slightly lost.

In just a few days, there is a fifty percent chance that he will be dead.

Fuck.

\---

After that, it all starts crumbling. It feels like years since she’s the played the game, but she can hear his voice in her head -  _ a Warden caused this, a Warden must _ \- but whenever she tries to will it away, all she can hear is the sound of Varric trying desperately to tell one last story about the man who once kissed her bar.

The first day Lila had found herself in Thedas, she’d been so overwhelmed she hadn’t been able to speak. It was Sera, of all people, who’d found her - lost on the outskirts of Haven, bedraggled and freezing to death. She’d taken her to the tavern there, with the other refugees, made sure she had somewhere to sleep and food in her belly. She could have died here in this place that only ever used to exist in her mind and in the pixels of her computer. Instead, it had saved her.

Again.

It had saved her in her own world too, when James had left and she hadn’t quite known how to move on with her life, when she’d lost her job, when she’d found one again only for it to turn out to be soul-destroying. Thedas had gotten her through all those things and more, a safe haven to retreat to when everything was just a little too much. It had always been real. Not in the same way. But it had always been real nonetheless.

Maybe this is why, the day the army starts marching to Adamant Fortress, Lila sneaks out of the bar and weaves her way through the crowds. The Inquisitor is never hard to find - he’s always in the most cinematic position, even in this reality, atop the platform on the stairs or on the battlements, somehow overlooking everything. People smile and wave at her as she passes, but no one really cares that she’s moving through Skyhold, occupied as they are by the sight of soldiers pouring through the archway and over the bridge.

Edric is halfway down the stairs from the great hall when she manages to reach him. It isn’t a conversation; you couldn’t really call it that. She stumbles up to him, and grabs hold of his arm, fingers clenching around the armour.

“There’s always another option. Even when it looks like there isn’t. There always is. You just have to find it.”

Someone starts calling the stunned Inquisitor’s name, and Lila panics, urging herself further up the stairs as if she’d always intended it, running as if she’d just grabbed him to steady herself. Pushing past people whose appearances - tall and dark and spiked; broad and warm and silver-blue - fail to filter into her awareness, so full as it is of the need to get away from her terrible decision.

\---

When Lila had first started playing Dragon Age, her computer had been a hand-me-down piece of shit from James’s older brother. She hadn’t replaced it until long after they’d split up, urged by a friend to finally eradicate everything of that failed future from her life. That hand me down system had barely scraped by the minimum system requirements on all counts. A potato would have run the game better.

None of the loading screens she ever experienced on it were as bad as this.

She’s onto day seven since the army left Skyhold before the numbness leaves, replaced by emotions that hit her and send her reeling at unexpected moments. At least she isn’t the only one. The bar is half full of people drinking themselves into a stupor, and half full of weeping staff. All they know is that the army has reached the Fortress. Nothing more. Even Leliana has been seen pacing.

On the eleventh day, Lila sneaks into the quietest place she can find - one of the still-untended rooms high up in the battlements, with a rotten bed slumped against one wall and vines growing through the stones. And, tears hot on her cheeks, she begins to practice. Harder than she’s managed before, hitting dangling fronds of the ceiling’s plantlife for targets, each punch and kick not impacting much at all, but leaving her sweating.

Then, a voice: “You can’t punch the truth. I wish you could. I’ve tried to find a way to help you do it, but there isn’t one.”

In her last conversation with Edric, the last real one, Lila had mentioned to him how much good Cole was doing in Skyhold. How happy people were thanks to him. How powerful his strange antics were. How much of a difference he made. She hadn’t realised that Edric had done the thing she’d desperately hoped he would do: he’d left Cole in Skyhold, rather than taking him to Adamant.

“Yes. Thank you. I think I would have hated it there, too.”

Lila doesn’t turn to look at him. She catches her breath; drops her partially lifted leg to the ground. “How long have you known?”

“You tell a thousand tales of things that time could trace, but bury what now looks like.” Behind her, the rotten bed creaks as Cole nudges it.

“You always knew.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She sits down on the ground, the heaviness of her weary limbs starting to hit her. Wood creaks; Cole is next to her, his back brushing lightly against hers. She can feel the edge of his hat brushing against her hair.

“I like you. You’re like me. I would only have scared you into stopping, and Edric says I shouldn't change who I am. You shouldn't either."

“Cole?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever get lonely?”

He says, “How can you be lonely when you’re in peoples’ stories all the time?” - but he hugs her anyway, thin arms holding her tightly against him, his hat falling to shade her face as if it, too, could protect her from the rest of the world.

\---

A hand slams down roughly onto her shoulder. Lila tenses, instinctually preparing to react, before she hears a familiar voice.

“Come on, Inquisitor. Not here. Let’s get the girl out of the crowd, at least.”

Hawke. Hawke is alive.  _ Edric _ is alive. His hand is still tight on her shoulder, bruising in its gauntleted grip. She stays completely still, staring at the people milling around ahead of her. She hadn’t realised they were back. The army had been pouring in for days, but not them, she’d looked everywhere, she…

“This way,” Edric says, pushing her forward. She doesn’t dare turn her head round to see Hawke behind her, to confirm that he really is alive. From the sound of his voice, Edric might hurt her, but more than that, if she sees Hawke then she’ll know it’s  _ just _ Hawke there, that Alistair is dead.

(She hadn’t intended to romance him, that first playthrough. She’d never been into the shy, endearing types. But he was so funny. He seemed safe. It had just happened. The Hero of Ferelden had wanted to be safe and so had Lila).

They march all the way up to the great hall, through it - Edric pauses as if to steer her towards the war room, but Hawke’s voice sounds again.

“Take her in there, Inquisitor, and everyone will think she’s done something wrong.”

“There are eyes everywhere,” Edric grumbles. “Let them think what they want.”

Amusement laces Hawke’s words as he suggests, “Take her into your quarters. They’ll still think something, of course, but it’ll be much more favourable.”

Edric groans. “I should’ve let you die, Champion.” He steers her left, through Josephine’s office and towards the war room.

It’s bigger than she expected - than she remembers, or imagined, or however one describes walking into a room you only saw in a game. The war table is huge, but the room is even bigger. She doesn’t really remember the bookshelves, the chairs, the extra tables at the side. And she only gets to look at them for a moment - Edric all but throws her towards a seat at the side of the room, sending her stumbling for balance. She catches it too well. Did they notice? Does it matter anymore?

“Sit,” Edric says, and she turns.

And looks straight into a third pair of eyes, attached to a silent, stoic face. Alistair.

Her legs give out and force her down into the chair behind her, hands shaking on her knees. “You’re alive,” she tries to say, but no words come out. They’re both alive.

“Funny thing, that conversation you and I had,” Edric says, pacing towards her. She has never seen him as a dangerous man before - but then, he doesn’t come into the Herald’s Rest with his greataxe strapped to his back. “Jumped right into my head when suddenly idiot one and idiot two here are all clamouring for a chance to get themselves killed.”

Lila curls her hands over her knees and holds them tightly, not looking away from Alistair’s face. All the skill she’s managed to scrabble together in reading people seems to have vanished - he’s nothing but blank, his eyes cold, unreadable.

“How did you…” she manages to say, her voice coming out in a whisper.

“Oh, that,” Hawke says, waving a hand. “We agreed never to talk about it again. It wasn’t pretty. You, on the other hand, appear to be both pretty and unnatural.”

Edric takes a step forward and leans towards her. “We were falling. I opened the way to the Fade without even  _ thinking _ . How in the name of Branka’s tits did you know that was going to happen?”

This is it.

She should never have done anything. Never told anyone. She should have let one of them die, let everyone be unhappy, never interfered - no. No, she’s a horrible person for even thinking it. Her life isn’t worth more than theirs, she isn’t even  _ from _ here, she -

Another hand on her shoulder. Soft, this time. Gentle. Cold.

“What’re you doing here, Cole?”

“You are not small,” Cole says - not to Edric, but to her, as he kneels down beside her. “It will be alright. I will tell them about your dreams.”

“Dreams. She’s a Dreamer?”

It’s the first thing Alistair’s said, and it comes out quiet - she wonders, now, why he isn’t at Weisshaupt. Shouldn’t he be there, if he’s alive? Who is taking the message to the Wardens there, telling them what’s happened? He’s here, so Edric can’t have exiled them.

“Yes,” Cole says. He flashes her a small, thin smile, and lies for her.

He lies for her so well that by the end of it, Lila finds herself wondering if she  _ is _ a Somnari. Maybe the other life she remembers, the one that seems so distant no matter how clearly she remembers it, never existed at all. Maybe she knows the future here and that world there from her dreams. They do both creep into her mind whilst she sleeps.

She stays silent through Cole’s tale, looking down at her hands again, feeling the heat of their eyes upon her. When he finishes, he runs his hand over her hair, smoothing it down.

“Fine,” Edric says, folding his arms over his chest. “From now on, you work for me.”

“I think she already works for you, Inquisitor,” Hawke remarks wryly.

“Orzammar’s balls. You report to Leliana. She’ll handle you. I want every single thing that pops up in your lyrium-addled mind to go down on parchment. You understand?”

Lila nods. Cole is gone now, his hand no longer on her head, but she doesn’t risk looking up. Not when she hears the door open, and feet clattering. Not when a pair of those clumping, booted feet come towards her.

Not when Alistair bows to whisper, “Thank you,” in her ear, before leaving her alone in the war room.

And not, if she’s honest, until she’s finally finished crying.

\---

The first few days after that are the worst. They put her in a room with one of Leliana’s agents for almost every hour that she isn’t working in the bar. She answers question after question, doing her best to tell stories from the game both faithfully and in a way that sounds like she dreamed them up.

Cole comes in, sometimes, without revealing himself to the agent in front of her. He just puts a hand on her shoulder, invisible, or whispers in her ear.

“You’re helping.”

It doesn’t feel like helping; not anymore.

This isn’t like holding a child that she knows, for certain, is only alive because she encouraged Edric to go and close rifts. It’s not like spotting Cassandra reading  _ Swords and Shields _ . There is no warmth, no rush of relief and joy all at once. Just hour upon hour of storytelling.

She gets what Varric went through a little better, now.

The benefit to styling what she knows as dreams is that no one expects her to remember every codex entry in the gameworld. She hadn’t read all of them, she’d never opened a single Dragon Age comic, and there were some things in this world - like the Inquisitor being a dwarf, for example - that she just plain hadn’t seen.

Nights in the bar become the only time she can get any semblance of rest. Cabot quietly gives her the jobs that don’t require thought - clearing tables, washing up, sweeping floors. After hours of talking, a lot of the time, her throat is so hoarse she can barely greet anyone who comes in.

And every night, Lila notices, Alistair sits there in the same corner as before, watching her work. He never says a word either. Not even the night that Leliana prowls in, eyebrow raised, and pronounces, "Master Cabot, would you explain why my agent is working in your bar?"

Cabot squares his shoulders and looks up at her. "You want to steal my staff, Nightingale, maybe you ought to think about replacing them too. I'd be run off my feet without her here."

Silently, Lila adds that no one had ever told her to go. Besides, she felt safe here. Helpful. Steady. If they take her away then all she has left is that damn room.

Something of it must show on her face, because Leliana's expression softens. "I will see about a replacement. Lila, Josephine would like to see you tomorrow afternoon."

When Lila leaves that night, Cabot fills her hands with whiskey and meat pies. "To help you get through it," he says. She hugs him with tears in her eyes and manages - several drams later - to finally get some real sleep.

\---

"Thank you for coming, Lila. Would you like to sit? I have tea, if you'd care for it, though I am afraid it is Orlesian rather than Ferelden…"

Despite her nerves, Lila laughs softly. "I'm used to people asking me for drinks," she replies, smiling slightly at Josephine before adding, "I would love some, thank you."

There is a steaming cup of what smells like rose in her hands before Josephine speaks again. Lila cradles it in her lap, trying to shut out the distant sound of footsteps and creaking that must be the building work.

"I feel that you are owed an apology. The Inquisitor is a man of very intense emotion, and to turn it upon someone who has so kindly served us is quite unacceptable."

Lila chuckles. "And you know he won't apologise himself. It's alright, Lady Montilyet. I understand. The Inquisitor is shouldering more than any of us in Skyhold could possibly comprehend. It is our duty to serve as best we can, using everything we have, to help ease that burden. And I have concealed my knowledge out of fear."

Shaking her head, Josephine adds a spoonful of honey to her cup before replying. "Cole has told me that this is not the first time you have helped. I understand we have you to thank for encouraging the Inquisitor to focus on closing rifts, for helping the Seeker to relax, and for ensuring that Sera stowed armour in the Winter Palace…you have done all that we might expect and more. Magic is a power many still wish to hide, and for good reason."

"I don't, uh. I can't do magic. Not in that way. I've only ever had...the things I know." A scraping sound from outside the window makes Lila twitch - god, she's so on edge. "I know that must sound like just another lie."

"No," Josephine says, smiling, "I believe you. With all that I have been told, I-"

The window breaks.

It shatters, hundreds of pieces of stained glass spilling over the desk behind Lila. Teacup falling to the floor, she jumps to her feet and meets Josephine's wide eyes, before turning to see the masked figure coming towards her. It's only a split second, but Lila recognises the assassins from the House of Repose instantly. And Josephine - the woman they must be here to kill, unless something’s gone wildly out of canon - is behind her. Fuck.

There is nothing Lila can do but square her stance, lift her hands, and get ready to reveal another secret. The assassin lunges for her with a dagger - she weaves to the side, deflects his arm with her left, and uppercuts him with her right. She's never done this without handwraps or gloves on and Maker, it hurts. But he's already moving again, and so is she - two kicks, one in his chest and the second to his already struck jaw.

Lila exhales in a rush of breath with the impact, the air too precious to use on telling Josie to run - she's still there, she's screaming for help, why won’t she just get away? - there's another assassin climbing in the window and Lila still hasn't put down the third.

In the year she's been in Thedas, Lila hasn't been able to truly practice. Secretly exercising out the back of the tavern isn't the same as actually having a bout with someone, but you don't forget twenty years of training in one off year.

...you just have a very rude awakening when you try.

But she manages to get the first assassin down on the ground, though it costs her a gash in her thigh and a solid bruise on her arm from the table. Lila tightens the headlock, praying the man will fall unconscious before the next assassin gets to them.

He doesn't. But then Josie is there with the teapot in her hands. She hurls it, scalding contents and all, into the face of the second assassin. They recoil screaming, making it worth every drop of tea that splashes to sear Lila's own skin. The man under her stops writhing.

"Lila!" Josie calls, rushing to help her up. Lila pushes her away - the second assassin is recovering and the first could wake up at any second and…

The door to the main hall opens, three more appearing in it. They can't win this, and Lila isn’t the one they’re here for. "Josie, war room. Now. Run."

Lila runs with her, but jumps to plant a flying kick into the chest of the second assassin as they start to stumble towards Josie. It makes her lose her footing and fall behind, almost crashing to the ground, but it's worth it. They get through the door.

"Don't close it," Lila says, turning to face the way they came. "Choke point."

It worked in her play throughs at least, when the encounter was so hard her party could only deal with one NPC at a time. Of course, at that point she could put Cassandra in the doorway. A seasoned warrior. With a shield. Not a thirty something accountant-turned-barmaid who once won county welterweight champion.

"If it's going badly, run towards the war room. Break the windows to get out. Just get near people."

Whether Josie says anything, or even just nods, Lila doesn't see - because the new group of assassins are on her, daggers gleaming. She can't hold them off for long. The third one - fuck. The third one has a crossbow.

"Josie, get to cover!" Lila yells, kicking the assassin at the knee joint and grabbing for her extended dagger arm. But the cover is unnecessary - a half second later the archer is gasping blood, the curve of an axe breaking through his chest.

It goes quickly after that. Edric takes out the assassins before the group behind him - Leliana, Cassandra and Bull - can even get into the room. He takes the next two out with a single sweep before simply reaching forward to grab the one attacking Lila. He takes the assassin by the hair, pulling her back and smashing her head repeatedly into the wall.

"Josie!" Leliana yells, her voice edged with desperation.

Lila steps aside to let the ambassador through. "I'm fine, Leliana," she hears her say, though the sound is quickly muffled by the hug the Antivan finds herself pulled into.

"What happened?" Cassandra asks, looking between the bodies and the two of them. "Is that all of them?"

"All that I saw," Lila says, panting for breath. A large hand - Bull's - hooks under her elbow and leads her into the centre of the group. The pain in her arm and leg, as well as the scalds on her face, starts to sear into her awareness.

"These are House of Repose assassins," Leliana says, examining the archer's body. "How in Andraste's name are you alive?"

Josie looks to Lila, face creased, and opens her mouth to reply - but Edric is already speaking. "That one was dead when I got in." 

He points to the body that Lila had pinned in a chokehold. It still isn’t moving. There are no axe wounds on the body.

She killed him.

\---

She doesn't even realise her legs have given way - it's just that one moment she's standing and the next, Bull is carrying her. There are rooms flying past but she doesn’t recognise them, until she does.

Pale oak cabinets, white marble sideboard, she’s back in her kitchen in Edinburgh. It’s slightly too small and there’s definitely not enough storage but it’s the first  _ nice _ place she’s owned on her own, since the breakup. Which might have been amicable, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel a bit lost in the process, after that many years of being made of two people.

A breath, and she’s in the great hall, inhaling the scent of Bull’s chest, sweaty from running and musky from his own innate smell. People are whispering all around them, but Lila can’t make out the words. She ducks her head against his chest and hides in that sensory overload, hoping to stop them recognising her.

Another breath. She’s in Bristol now, in the tall townhouse she grew up in, where she got an entire floor to herself once her brother and sister moved out. Her trophies are lined up on a wall in the living room, next to her brother’s dressage rosettes, because one person’s victory is the family’s victory.

One more breath. Furs, soft and thick with that same masculine scent as before. Bull’s. Lila feels too much of it for it to be unreal. Doesn’t she?

"...la? Can you hear me?"

"I - yes. Yes, I can hear you."

The bed shifts as Bull sits down beside her, his thigh pressing against hers. She looks down at it and realises it's bandaged.  _ That's it. I've snapped. I'm surprised it took this long. _

"Sleeper agent, right? Been trying to work you out for months. Never quite added up."

She killed someone.

There should be a dozen emotions running through Lila's body and none of them are there. Even the panic she should be feeling at Bull's question. There's just nothing but the occasional feeling that she can hear the sound of her dog yapping at the front door. She's not thought about Benji in so long, and now she can feel his wiry fur under her hand.

"This thing you're doing," Bull continues, "the Ben-Hassarath call it a sign of Asala-taar. Soul sickness. It happens to Hisraad who go so deep they forget what's real."

They call it dissociating in her world. The word pops into her head unbidden, though she hasn’t studied psychology since A-Level. Apparently, you can’t bury a boiling pot forever. It’ll always spill over.

"What," Lila says softly, "if I never knew what was real in the first place?"

Bull chuckles, tilting his head to peer at her through his one good eye. "What kind of spy knows how to fight, but hasn't killed someone?"

“Bull?”

“Yeah?”

Light. She can keep her voice light more easily than she expects, and she needs to. The facts of the situation have returned to her with abrupt clarity, even if they still aren’t making her feel anything. 

“That hand you have on my neck. It’s enough to kill me, isn’t it.”

He smiles at her, sadly. “Yeah.”

“I’ve never killed anyone,” she says, closing her eyes. This might make him kill her anyway. Even though it’s the truth. “I’m not a sleeper agent. I’m not a spy. I’m also, um. Not a Somnari.”

She feels the thick fingers twitch on the back of her neck, but they don’t go hard enough to snap it. Bull inhales sharply through his nostrils, and Lila can feel his stare boring into her face.

“Fuck,” he says at length, not letting go of her. “You’re not bullshitting me.”

“I’m not. But that truth’s simple. The whole truth is - you wouldn’t believe me.”

He grunts. “That why the kid lied to protect you?”

“I think Cole lied because if he didn’t, the Inquisitor was going to kill me,” Lila says softly, prodding at the wound in her thigh. The bandage darkens with a little more blood. She could have died, and if she’d died, who would have helped them all find their way? The Inquisitor could only do so much, and…

Lila takes a deep breath.

“I’ll tell you,” she says, “but I want other people there. To hear it. Anyone who...anyone who thinks I’ve lied to them. Please. Don't make me do this more than once."

\---

Her bedroom has a key. Lila has always known it has a keyhole, but so do a lot of doors that don't get locked. Hers is locked now, though, turning her shared room into a prettified prison. Her roommates must have been moved elsewhere, because hours have passed; most of them spent asleep, after whatever it was they gave her for the pain in her leg. The gash had turned out to be much worse than she’d realised, once the adrenaline wore off.

Sometime in the middle of the night, when Lila lies awake staring at the ceiling, the door starts to scratch. She jerks, painfully, before easing herself up onto on elbow. The only light in the room is from outside, and that's very little - there's no window in here, just an arrowslit. She can see enough to tell that the handle of the door hasn't moved. The light is gone from the keyhole, though.

"Hello?"

There's no answer; the scratching continues, and Lila begins looking around herself. With her leg like this she's got shit for balance - if someone's breaking in to hurt her, she needs a weapon. There. The chair at the end of Nalia's bed. That will have to do. Breaking it over their head will at least buy her time to start screaming for help.

Lila is stood by the door holding the chair aloft when it opens, leaning against the wardrobe to brace herself despite her weak leg. Her eyes register a figure moving in, closing the door quickly. No weapon out, but the armour makes her brain say  _ attacker _ , makes her arms move on instinct. Heart racing in her throat, she brings the chair down - into a pair of hands that quickly fly up in defence.

They stand in an awkward deadlock, four hands wrapped around different parts of the chair, before Alistair says, “In retrospect, I probably should have knocked,” and Lila bursts into hysterical laughter.

She laughs so hard that her leg gives out, and Alistair has to take the weight of the chair from her. He places it to the side, shoulders shaking with his own laughter, and reaches out a hand to help her back over to the bed. He pushes her towards Nalia’s bed initially and she bursts into a second set of giggles steering him the right way.

It’s just too ridiculous. It has to be, because the alternative is facing the reality of this place that should not have been real outside of a video game. The giggles subside only when she feels the hard edge of the bed against the back of her leg, focuses on the throbbing of the wound in her thigh.

“Did you pick the lock?” she says, when the two of them are sat on the edge of her (embarrassingly unmade) bed.

Alistair grins sheepishly. “The Inquisitor told me I had to wait until tomorrow to talk to you, like everyone else. Leliana reminded me that she’d taught me how to use a lockpick when we were bored in camp.”

Lila isn’t sure what to say to that. No one’s ever broken into her prison cell to see her before. So she says the first stupid thing that comes into her mind. “Aren’t you worried I’ll try and escape?”

“I did hear you know what you’re doing in a fight,” Alistair muses, “but I’m pretty sure I can take you.”

Following his gaze to her leg, which is bleeding again - thanks, presumed intruder - Lila nods in agreement. “...why are you here?”

There’s a pause that sits between them like lead. Alistair’s face shifts as he does, chewing something on the inside of his mouth, looking anywhere but at her. His brows knit together, showing all of the lines in his face. How old is he now? He was young, in the Blight, but that was years ago.

“Ah,” Alistair says, finally, “I’m here to help you escape.”

The next silence is hers, though it’s much shorter than his. She shifts, and instantly regrets it as pain shoots up her leg. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I would have died. Wouldn’t I? I would never have let Hawke do it, not when it’s the Wardens’ fault all this happened in the first place.” He reaches out and takes her hand, fingers cold. It’s such an intimate gesture, holding hands - but in that moment, Lila can hardly process it. “I should be dead.”

_ A Warden did this. A Warden must. _

“One of you always died. There was never anything I could do. One of you always died.”

“How do you know?”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

His voice is hard and full of challenge, reminding her that Alistair is more than just the man who gently flirted with her in the bar all those weeks ago. Lila takes a deep breath and lets herself think about the things she has kept shut away as much as possible.

“I’m from a different...world? Reality? I don’t...actually know. In my world, yours is a story. A story I lived through, but not as me, as - as the Inquisitor, and as Hawke, and, um. As the Hero of Ferelden.”

“Ah. Oh. Um. Wow.”

Lila is filled with the urge to rub the back of her neck, the way Cullen would - but something about the moment leaves her unable to do anything but remain still. To remain empty. “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it.”

“I passed a point, a few years ago, when I stopped thinking of anything as ridiculous anymore.” Alistair smiles lopsidedly. “By the end of the Blight I half believed Solona was going to talk the Archdemon to death.”

“Oh! That’s which one she was. I wasn’t sure, because no one ever...you know, called her by her name.”

“Most people don’t think of her as a person,” Alistair replies, before going quiet for a moment. Then he stands up abruptly, walking over to the opposite bed and pulling off one of the blankets. “Help me tear this up. Well come on, we can’t get you out of here with your leg puking blood all over the place.”

Lila’s fingers catch into the blanket as he pushes one corner into her hands, but she just holds onto it, clutching tightly. “This is  _ insane.” _

“Yeah. Probably. Just a little. You can walk, right? It’ll hurt but they said you hadn’t broken any bones, just gotten a bit stabbed.”

She drops the blanket and stumble-steps forwards, grabbing Alistair by the upper arms. “I’m serious. Listen to me, this is mad. We can’t just...run out of here. You don’t even know me very well. Why are you risking everything for - for me?”

“You saved my life,” Alistair repeats again, but he shifts too, reaching up one empty hand to brush her hair out of her face. “Fine! Fine. It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous. Everyone’s always told me so, if I’m honest. And frankly I’ve spent long enough trying to pretend otherwise.”

“Ali-”

“Let be ridiculous. Please. Just this once. I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I know I - need to. Please.”

His hand is still pressed against the side of her face, palm cold against her cheek. One of his fingers is tracing small circles in her scalp. Suddenly, Lila can hear the sound of the wind outside, the sound that had never gone away but had seemed so irrelevant in the scheme of things. But it creeps back into her mind, forcing her to remember the realness of the world around her.

“About a year ago,” she says quietly, not moving, “I fell out of a rift. I ended up with some refugees until the Inquisition found me. And every moment since then has felt...so normal. Like the impossibility got drawn out of the world.”

“I guess all of this is impossible and stupid and ridiculous already then.”

“Yeah,” Lila laughs. “Yeah it is. But it’s real, Alistair. It’s so real it hurts. I can’t leave these people. Not when I can help them.”

In the dim light that casts a line across Alistair’s face, Lila sees him smile sadly. “No,” he says, dropping his hand from her face to rest at his side. “You really don’t.”

“But -”

“You’ve given them enough. You’ve given us enough. I’m alive because of you. One life is already priceless.” His smile twists. “Even mine. Look - I couldn’t help keep Solona from having to be...everything she had to be. Let me save you. Please.”

They tear the blankets into strips and bind them around Lila’s leg; she steals a coat from one of her roommates, and hopes they’ll forgive her. She piles what little she owns into a satchel, which looks small next to the proper travelling bag Alistair has - but at least one of them will be prepared.

Alistair sneaks her out through the door because the window is too small for either of them, and together - slowly - they make their way through the servants’ corridors where no one is really watching.

\--

“Ahem.”

“Fuck.”

“Alistair! I had thought you had always resisted adopting Oghren’s colourful language. What a delightful surprise.”

Even in the darkness, Lila can see Leliana’s smile. It is the sort of smile one would call dangerous. Especially right now. Lila’s eyes dart about, but she can’t see anyone else - it’s just Leliana. She doesn’t know whether that makes it better or not. After all, this way, there are no witnesses.

“Seeing dozens of your friends turn dozens more of your friends into demons tends to change a person,” Alistair replies drily, shifting ever so slightly in front of Lila.

“I am sorry, Alistair. I cannot even imagine -” Leliana shakes her head, then sighs deeply. “If you keep going this way then you will be spotted. The Inquisitor has posted guards by the main gate.”

Lila’s eyes widen. “Why are you telling us this?”

“My agents were very thorough with you, no? I think that you have told us many things, many more things than we would have known otherwise. And too much information is dangerous. It can overwhelm you; cloud your judgement. The Inquisitor is a good man, but he is afraid. Those who are scared can do terrible things.”

“No shit,” murmurs Alistair.

“As for you,” Leliana continues, turning to look at him, “you have been exiled anyway, and are expected to leave regardless. The only reason you are still here is her. So if she is gone, why would anyone expect you to stay?”

“That’s why you’re not at Weisshaupt,” Lila realises aloud. “Because of me.”

“Weisshaupt? Am I meant to be there?”

“Carrying the news of what happened to the First Warden. You - in what I know, if you survived, you always went straight there, exiled or not.”

“Warden Stroud has travelled to Weisshaupt, since Alistair had unfinished business here,” Leliana explains, before shifting, her head snapping to look at something past them. “If you are going to go, it must be now.”

Stepping forward, Alistair pulls the spymaster into a brief, one-armed hug. “I honestly thought you were going to be the one insisting she stayed. Everything for the mission, and all that.”

A small twist, barely a smile, curves Leliana’s lips. “The world makes us do many regrettable things, my friend. Darkness comes when we forget to do them for good, rather than just because they are there. Now go. Before I change my mind.”

\---

Thirty minutes from Skyhold, Lila realise they have made a fatal error. It is the middle of the night, and Skyhold is in the middle of mountains. Cold, snowy mountains. Even living in Scotland hadn’t prepared her for this - it wasn’t like she’d lived in the Highlands. The coat she grabbed from the bedroom is enough to break the wind, but not to deal with the worst of the biting chill.

“I d-don’t t-th-think this is w-working,” she manages to stammer.

They’ve barely talked in the time they’ve been hightailing it as quickly as one can through snow dunes, so it comes as a surprise to Lila when the voice she hears from Alistair is not low, or soft, or concerned. It’s the chipper, sarcastic voice she remembers from Origins.

“Come on, just a bit more! I’d be a terrible rescuer if I got you out of a prison only to let you die on a mountain. See that ledge up there? It’s a cavern. Noticed it on the way in one time. We get up there, we’re out of sight of the fortress, we make camp until we’re not freezing our balls off. Well. My balls, anyway.”

It’s too cold to reply, so Lila just goes with it as he hooks an arm under her elbow and starts pulling her the rest of the way. The one benefit to the cold is that she can no longer feel the pain in her thigh - though that’s probably not a good thing, really. Even in the dim light of Alistair’s mostly closed lantern, she can see the dark stain on her leggings.

But they get there, and though Alistair makes too many bad jokes about the possibility of finding a bear in the cavern, it’s clean. They have to crawl to get through part of it, but then it opens up into just enough space for the bags and the two of them.

It takes Lila a while to break out of the relief and realise Alistair’s been talking the whole time.

“...taught me a thing or two about patching people up, because you couldn’t spend more than five minutes with Wynne without her trying to teach you some lesson or another, normally about how immature you were. Or maybe that was just me. Anyway, count backwards from 100.”

“S-sorry?”

“I know, it sounds stupid. I’m sure you can manage it. Count backwards from 100.”

Lila frowns at him, arms wrapped around herself so tightly it feels like her whole body is shivering rather than just her arms, and says, “100, 99, 98, 97...96…”

And then gets lost.

As she stumbles to find the next number, and gets it only to stumble on the one after that, Alistair’s jovial demeanour falters. “Oh Maker. Okay. Sit down. Lila, sit down now. Your clothes, are they wet?”

“D-don’t k-know.”

Hands wrap around each side of her face, pressing hair she hadn’t noticed was frozen into clumps against her stinging cheeks. “Lila, listen to me. You’re too cold. It can kill you. I’m going to sort it out, but I have to, ah, touch you to do it. Is that okay?”

She’s barely managed to nod before Alistair starts undoing her coat, putting his hand up against the hem of her tunic, underneath to her leggings, her shirt, before sighing in relief.

“Right. You’re dry, that’s good. Really good. Okay. Hold on there.”

The next few minutes become a very confusing flurry of activity. Alistair pulls out almost the entire contents of his backpack, wrapping her in multiple blankets and tying them onto her with belts and even a shirt. Then, as if that weren’t strange enough, he asks her to stand up and walk back and forth in the cavern. She’s only just able to do it without knocking her head against the ceiling - he has to crouch back and forth to join her.

How much time passes, Lila isn’t sure. After an unknown number of circuits, Alistair produces a pot and scoops a glob of something out of it with his fingers. She only realises it’s honey when he holds his hand out towards her and she catches a whiff of the scent. Fortunately, things are so strange already that the exceptionally intimate process of licking honey off his fingers doesn’t really register.

Only once she’s started to be able to feel just how much everything hurts does Alistair let her stop pacing back and forth, and undo the many layers strapped to her. He even takes her coat, which confuses her until she realises he’s putting it next to his armour. It clicks, then; hypothermia. She has hypothermia.

Panic begins to take her as Alistair gets her to lie on the blankets, settling next to her and pulling the rest of the coverings over them. Lila barely registers the strength of his arm around her waist as she begins moving each individual finger, wiggling all of her toes, checking that every extremity is still working.

“Hey,” Alistair says, his breath warm against her ear. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

She doesn’t know how she manages to sleep, but it comes faster than she expects.

\---

Incredulously, Lila wakes to the smell of porridge and smoke.

She’d panic at the second if it wasn’t for the first, but when the slightly milky, slightly sweet whiff of oats cuts through the hard smoke her heart stops thumping in her chest. It’s cold again, but nowhere near as cold as it was. Even still she pulls on her extra layers without leaving the blankets, shoes and all, then wraps them around herself before making the crawl back through the cavern.

“Oh good!” Alistair says from beside the smallest campfire she’s ever seen, waving a wooden spoon at her. “You’re just in time. And it looks like your feet still work.”

“My hands, too,” laughs Lila, because what else do you say to the person who casually saved your life. “I’d be a terrible barmaid without any hands.”

The jovial expression falters, and Alistair half-drops the spoon back into the pot in front of him. “Lila, I -”

“I’m okay. Well, I feel pretty stupid. We didn’t really think this through.”

“We didn’t really have a  _ choice,”  _ Alistair points out, as she sits down next to him. “Edric was gathering everyone in the War Room the next day to ‘deal’ with you.”

She should be horrified by the rest of the sentence; instead, Lila gets stuck on his use of  _ we, _ which lodges somewhere in her chest as a tight knot. Shifting the blankets, she reaches out and puts the spoon back in its proper place - then takes Alistair’s hand.

“I would have been okay, you know,” she says softly, tracing a scar on one of his fingers.

“Would you have been yourself?”

“I...honestly don’t know what my ‘self’ is, anymore. I guess I’ve been trying to avoid the question for a while now.”

With his other hand, Alistair reaches over and stirs the porridge again, which has started to smell a little too much like the fire beneath it. Scowling, he scoops out the edible top, and neither of them mentions the layer on the bottom of the pan.

“Watch out, it’s hot.” He clears his throat then, poking at the surface of his breakfast. “I really don’t know very much about you, do I. And I thought I was being only slightly ridiculous.”

It hurts to smile, because the skin on her face still stings from the cold the night before - but Lila does it anyway as she bends to scoop a spoonful of steaming porridge. “This will take a while,” she says, blowing the steam away. “I’ve got to explain my entire world as I’m going along.”

“Well, we’ve got no horses, so the journey’s going to be pretty long.”

The reality of it hits her then, as fierce as the last night’s cold. She’s a fugitive, in essence, and Alistair is in exile. There is almost nowhere they can go that will be safe. The Inquisition is everywhere, and the alternatives are so far away.

When she manages to get her voice to work, Lila manages to croak, “Where are we even going?”

“Ah,” Alistair says, resting his spoon back in his bowl. “I’d really gotten as far as ‘not Ferelden’. Not Tevinter. Definitely not Tevinter. I’d give a lot of Orlais a pass too, if I’m honest. Is...is there anywhere you’d like to go? I imagine you’ve seen most of it, from uh...what you said, before.”

Lila’s mouth falls open. “Actually,” she says, “I really only know Ferelden, Orlais and the Free Marches.”

They spend the rest of breakfast making a long list of pros and cons of the various nations, finishing their porridge and doing their best to scrape the burned remains of it out of the pot. Alistair pulls out his spare shirts for her and Lila puts it on along with every piece of clothing she owns - which leaves her looking a bit ridiculous, but a lot warmer.

Only when it comes time to set off does Alistair pause, looking uncertain. “...I, uh. I realised I keep - that we - that is -” He stops, clears his throat, and starts again, knotting his brow into the serious expression she associates with his older self. “If you want me to get you somewhere and then leave, that’s okay too.”

Lila nods, and then turns, beginning to step down into the snow. “That’s very kind of you, Alistair,” she says, tilting her head and smiling. “But I thought you wanted to hear my very long, very confusing story.”

She doesn’t miss the way his eyes light up, or the slight bounce as he steps down to join her.

He doesn’t miss her hand when he reaches to take it.

\---

In the end, for all of their planning, all of the careful consideration of the problems and positives of each place they could go, things end up happening in the way they always have done - out of a ridiculous and incredulous series of occurrences.

Alistair proves to be incredibly adept at picking up a Scottish accent when she demonstrates, and absolutely catastrophic at trying to do basic kickboxing moves when she shows him how she fights. For her part, Lila manages to get the hang of a sword, but never a shield, and finds that she absolutely cannot stomach the smell of any cheese Alistair is excited about.

They make it to the Storm Coast and end up on a ship owned by a very familiar pirate captain who’s all too happy to take Solona Amell’s best friend wherever he wants to go. The game, Lila quickly decides, did no justice to Isabela’s commanding presence and all of the justice to her general choice of attire.

By the time they reach the Free Marches, a familiar looking raven tracks them down, bearing a letter from a very grateful and definitely very anonymous member of the Dwarven merchants’ guild, who casually reminds them that no one in Kirkwall knows what they look like, and that the Hawke estate doesn’t have anyone taking care of it right now. Or living in it. And also Garrett always leaves a spare key on top of the stone carving just above the door.

Despite Varric’s assurances, they put their hoods up when they get to Kirkwall just incase, and Alistair buys a coat from one of Isabela’s sailors that manages to conceal his armour. Walking through Hightown is as surreal as every moment in Thedas has been.

Lila remembers being hunched over her desk, screaming at it for crashing yet again instead of loading into the game, desperately waiting for a patch so that her ten year old graphics card would be able to handle it. She remembers the urge to scream when Anders destroyed the Chantry, and the urge to reach over and hold him and tell him it would all be okay. She remembers Fenris’s low laughter and Flemeth’s grin and Merrill’s lilting voice, and none of the memories are hers, but they’re hers.

When Alistair reaches up and pulls the spare key down, Lila takes it and turns it over in her hands. She gets stuck there, fingers twisting the ring at the top of the key over and over and over again.

“Lila?”

“I just...needed to make sure it was real.”

He stays silent as she unlocks the door, as she gasps in recognition, as she runs her fingertips over the fireplace, the letter desk, the chairs and the shelves and the banisters. She runs up to look, with careful reference, in Leandra Hawke’s room - the room she had never seen. She tears through the house looking at all of the places that were previously closed to her.

“You really do know this place,” Alistair says, staring at her from the doorway to the kitchen as her hands splay over the marble countertop.

Lila chokes back a sob instead of speaking.

“Oh. Hey, it’s okay. It...Lila, look at me.” Alistair places his hands on her shoulders and turns her towards him, tilting her chin up. “They win in the end. The Inquisitor and the others. They win in the end, right?”

“Yes. Yes, they do. Edric tears a rift open inside Corypheus and kills him.”

Alistair nods. There’s no concern in his face; just stern determination. “When it’s done, when everyone’s safe, we’ll write to them. We’ll make sure it’s okay to go back.”

“Why?” Lila asks, resting her hands on his chest; making sure he’s real, too.

His reply is soft, and quiet, and makes her heart clench.

“Because I want to take you to every place you’ve ever been in this world.”

“...oh.”

She wants to see the hut Flemeth and Morrigan lived in. The place where Cailan and Duncan died and were buried. The Denerim Alienage. Every inch of the forest in the Emerald Graves. She wants to know what’s behind all the closed doors in the Winter Palace and how much of Val Royeaux you can really see from the upper levels of the courtyards and what the top of Sundermount smells like.

But it would take too long to tell Alistair Theirin all of these things, so instead Lila just pulls on the buckles of his armour and kisses him.

\---

Lila never works out if her world was real. Not for lack of curiosity, or because she stops thinking about it at all. Not because the answers aren’t out there, if she looked hard enough, if she found the right people to tell her the right things.

In the end, it just doesn’t matter as much as the things that are real now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


End file.
